


Lup Isn't Dead

by Royalwriter



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alice Isn't Dead AU, F/M, Memory Loss, barry is keisha, lamenting, listen it's just an alice isn't dead au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 03:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16526180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royalwriter/pseuds/Royalwriter
Summary: Barry won't stop searching the highways until he finds Lup. No matter what happens.It's an Alice Isn't Dead au, I have no excuse for this.





	Lup Isn't Dead

**Author's Note:**

> This, I've been listening to Alice Isn't Dead since the start and I'm emo about it ending. I love blupjeans. That's all I've got for you.

Lup, I forgot you. I don’t know how, because I never thought that you would be something I could forget. I remember now, god do I remember now. Thinking back on it, on you laughing next to me, your hand trailing over my shoulder as you left a room, I still can’t believe I forgot.

I woke alone in my bed just like I thought I’d be doing every morning. A regular occurance, the spot next to me cold, blankets only moved where I’d moved them in the night. The only sound in the apartment the faint dripping of a coffee pot, the coffee pot that I’d left on the night before. All the telltale signs of someone living alone.

And then I remembered, because how could I have forgotten?

How could this have happened? I stumbled out of our room, stopped, grabbed my glasses and stumbled back out. I’m terrible at remembering them to begin with, but now it was clashing with you handing them to me as I walked out the door. Sticking your tongue out at me and holding it above my head. I’d always try to catch it even though I fell on my ass half the time.

Once I realized, everything snapped into frame.

You were in pictures, because of course you were in pictures. You were everywhere, traces of you in every corner of the apartment. Lipstick still left out in the bathroom, spices that I had no hope of learning how to use in the kitchen.

Maybe the most damning, the best sign of how much I’d forgotten, a scrawled note on my desk next to all the scribblings I have.

“Back Soon. Lup.”  
I— I’ll be honest I don’t know how I got to the gas station. I guess I threw everything in the car, the car that still had your purse tucked under the seat, and I just drove.

How long had it been? How long had I been living like this? Without you, without even knowing what I was missing? I had no way of knowing, not yet at least.

When I finally pulled into the gas station I got myself together enough to look through my phone.

I looked through my phone because of course, I was a fucking idiot, of course there would be texts on my phone. Phones have dates, and photos, and all that other shit that if I’d stopped to think for even a minute I would have thought of.

I’m an idiot without Lup, an idiot. I can crank out science like a motherfucker but anything else? I always needed you for that. 

The last photo I saw was you standing in front of a truck labelled “Bay and Creek Shipping.” A name that means nothing, a company that I’ve never even seen in passing, not even on highways, or at least not often enough to remember. 

Your texts didn’t tell me anything though, and despite the fact that I could finally remember you, I didn’t know how you left. Your leaving, something that should have utterly destroyed me, was nothing but a gap in my mind

A blank spot, like I’d forgotten what I walked into the kitchen for, just nothing.

Like it could ever be that _trivial_

The last text was dated from a month ago.

A month, a fucking month. You could be halfway across the world by now, hell, you could be dead by now and I would have no way of knowing. No way of knowing because my brain just up and deleted everything that could have helped me.

I walked out of the restaurant, stormed out really. I’m sure I made for the quite the show, this tiny nerdy guy suddenly very pissed off in the middle of nowhere. They probably thought I’d gotten dumped.

For a little bit I thought maybe I had. I sat in my car and thought long and hard about that one.

Maybe you’d gotten sick of me, up and walked out, and I just couldn’t take it. My brain so aggressively couldn’t handle the thought of a world with you in it that I wasn’t a part of that it just, deleted everything. Let me go on living as though you never existed.

Except that didn’t make much sense either. I like to think I know myself, or know part of myself. Know something about myself anyhow. I like to think that I know enough about myself to know that I would want to remember you, even if it hurt. Especially if it hurt.

I kept sitting in the car after I realized that, just trying to figure out what to do.

Did I say I went out to the car? I think I remember that. God— I’m bad at talking without someone to tell me when I’m talking in circles. Without, “Hey Barold I love you babe but you’ve told me this story eight times today and it hasn’t changed,”

I’m not good at talking without a response Lup, I’ve never been much for it. You know me, stammering my way through press conferences on research that I’ve dedicated my life to. 

But there’s a chance you might be listening to this, and so I’m going to keep talking, I’ll keep talking until I find you.

Fuck— Okay I missed my exit, one second.

* * *

I sat in the car for I don’t know how long just trying to figure out where to go from there. And then I saw it, through my windshield. This horrible just— blackness. There was a man, but not a man— his face splintered and shattered in pieces and this black ooze dripped from it.

He was approaching a smaller man— god I don’t even know if man is the right word. He looked twenty five at the oldest, baseball cap, baggy jacket. You’d have said he looked like me when I was younger. Maybe he did.

The other man— creature— I don’t know, he started to grab him, so of course I yelled, got out of my car to make a scene, did everything exactly as you’re supposed to do. I couldn’t just watch this happen.

I got out of the car, and yelled in what I thought was a brave tone. I told him to stop, to knock it off.

He turned, and he faced me, and just grinned. He grinned the most horrible grin I’ve ever seen. His mouth stretched too far into the cracks, the black void spreading between the empty space. My head started to buzz.

“Interesting…” He chattered, chattered filling every part of my mind. He dropped the man he was holding and came towards me. I tried to run at that point Lup, I’m not a coward but I couldn’t make myself stand there for a stranger.

I know I should have been able to, but I just couldn’t.

It dropped me, turning back towards the man it’d left and— God Lup I don’t know how to describe it.

It told me to watch and it just— absorbed him. He was there and then it was like he was just completely gone, except this creature it turned and smiled at me with his teeth, his teeth, the bleeding part of his lip where he’d chewed as if it would save him. I ran Lup, I ran into my car and I drove as fast as I could. 

I’ve never been that scared, not even when I first realized you were gone. I feel shitty admitting to that, but this was much scarier even than losing you. There’s a different in those types of fears, the long term and the short term. The immediate danger that’s built into our bodies. Adrenaline pumping through me trying to get me to go, but not knowing where. 

I usually at least can pick a direction to run in.

* * *

I called Taako, once I got back to the house. I should have called him earlier.

He didn’t pick up the phone on the first few rings, so I left him a voicemail explaining that I’d forgotten you, and I didn’t know why, and if he could please just tell me where you were I’d owe him my life. I begged. It was not even remotely dignified, but I didn’t care if he dragged me through the mud about it. I needed to know what was happening.

But Lup when he called me back he didn’t know what I was talking about. He swore at me, called me fucking insane. He was so furious that I dared to tell him about a sister that he had, that I dared to mock him for not having a family. Didn’t I know who he was? Didn’t I know that he was Taako from TV?

I tried to laugh it off. Told him I knew he was kidding, knew that he liked to make fun of me, but seriously Taako I forgot Lup. How could he not know who I was talking about? 

The worst part was that as I kept talking his anger faded. He started laughing at me, asking what kind of a fan prank it was. I started crying, Lup, I’m not ashamed to admit that. You know how I cry.

He told me that he was sorry I was so unhinged, that I needed to take some chill pills, and if I didn’t contact him again except to give him my address he’d send me a signed book. I hung up, because what else was I supposed to do?

Something is seriously wrong Lup.

I tried everyone else too, but only Magnus answered. He was perfectly polite, informing me that I must have a wrong number, seriously, please hang up, he was sorry.

I thought I was losing my mind Lup, I really did.

I paced the house because, maybe, just maybe you didn’t exist. Maybe this life we’d been living had been a fallacy, some misremembered hallucination. But the evidence remained strewn about the house. There were photos, photos of all of us.

The photos online were completely stripped, Taako’s instagram bare and not just because he didn’t want to cop to hanging out with us. It looked almost systematic. Not only had you been erased, it seemed that every connection we had at all had been taken.

I don’t understand why. I still can’t understand why.

* * *

I tore through your things after that. I’m sorry about that. You didn’t put passwords on anything because you trusted me and it never left the house and I betrayed that trust.

When I find you I’ll make it up to you, I’ll make this whole thing up to you a thousand times over.

I ran that code I wrote, the one that you called me a creep for having. It let me scan through all your files for— well that was the problem. I didn’t know what I was searching for. I searched run, plan, leave, anything that would explain it.

I don’t know what I wanted to find.

Maybe a note, explaining that you’d left. That’d you’d been unhappy in our marriage. That you’d told everyone else I was unstable and they shouldn’t talk to me. But there was nothing.

So I went through it all manually, I searched through every folder, every system file until I found it. A folder, filled with pay-stubs from a company I’d never heard of. Bay and Creek shipping. 

I don’t know why you were working with them, why you would lie about something like that. You made plenty of money from your show with Taako, and that combined with my job paid sure we were always comfortable. More than comfortable sometimes. 

I got a job with the company. I know, you wouldn’t believe it. Tiny old me up behind the driver’s seat of one of those huge ass trucks. It took me a couple weeks to get a license, but if it meant finding you I didn’t care. I had to do it, I needed to.

I didn’t sleep much, during that time. Without you to scold me for it was hard. I needed to be searching, needed anything. I kept seeing that creature when I closed my eyes.

On top of that, now that I knew you used to be there, the void seemed unending. How do you feel the absence of someone Lup? How does the silence where you used to breathe have a sound? I don’t know, but I learned in that time.

At least with the truck underneath me there’s noise. At least in the hotels there’s the constant motion of people moving in and out. I don’t know where I’m looking, but I know I won’t stop until I find you.

I’m coming Lup. No matter what it takes.


End file.
